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Some Quick First Impressions: Gifuu Doudou!! Kanetsugu to Keiji, Kamisami no Inai Nichiyoubi and Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Gifuu Doudou!! Kanetsugu to Keiji

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a famous hero from the Sengoku Era.
Okay. Hands down, bar none. This was the biggest WTF of the season, and I don’t think that any other series will be able to top this. And I already KNEW that this series would be weird. For those of you who don’t know the bizarre background for this series: it’s based on a manga written by the guy who wrote Fist of the North Star (the incredibly muscly over the top action story that basically created the Shounen Genre). The story was adapted by Yasuhiro Imagawa, the guy who directed the New Mazinger, the first Giant Robo, and some more really epic mecha series. It’s direted by the director of Hetalia. Yeah. In my mind I was already imagining these incredibly muscly guys yelling and fighting non-stop in an incredibly over the top way while at the same time having gay romantic antics. Um yeah, about that fighting. Let me tell you exactly how much fighting there is in this series: two people slash a sword, and a guy fires an arrow. Beyond that, this show is all about TALKING about fighting. And that with the gay romantic undertones. I know this is hard to believe, but this show is even camper than Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Everything is so incredibly sentimental that this episode became completely hilarious. And don’t get me wrong, the animation is crap, and it hardly ever tries to make actual jokes. It’s all about the atmosphere in this show. The camp, camp, camp atmosphere.
OP: Samurai baby, yeah baby
ED: The art is nice and all, but those facial expressions are unsettling…
Potential: 80% (hey it made me laugh, okay?)

Kamisami no Inai Nichiyoubi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a gravekeeper
So yeah, lots of series tend to follow a tried and true format in one way or the other. For this, it’s the one about the guy who ends up together with a young girl who has special powers, only where most of these series make the girl really talented or smart in one way or the other, the girl here is weak; much like your average young girl, except that it this show doesn’t treat her like that and throws all sorts of horrible things at her. For a moment I was afraid that this series just went with a young girl for the cuteness factor, but I have to say: I’m impressed. It actually uses the girl’s age really well. She’s meant to be young and naive. The setting has a lot of potential as well: a world in which people ust become zombies when they die. It’s up to the rest of the series to explore exactly what that means: what are the pros and cons? How much of their humanity do these zombies regain? This first episode had some great ideas. The big danger is that it used all of its ideas right at the start. If it didn’t, then this can become quite the interesting series.
Potential: 80%

Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a deranged bibliophile who reincarnates into a dachshund.
It’s not like Gonzo’s animation during their prime days was always good. In fact, they were infamous for having really rushed production schedules, but they had the directors to make up for it. They had the ambition and the writers to make sure that that didn’t matter for their best series. I say this because of one reason: Dog and Scissors was their big chance at a comeback, but it has one major flaw: the comedy sucks! Most of the jokes depend on the banter between the male and female lead, and the delivery is just almost always off: characters just ramble their lines in one-dimensional ways, rather than thinking about things like tonation or delivery. That’s bad for a show that’s supposed to be a comedy. But you know what? I actually liked this episode when it didn’t try to be funny. I’m baffled a bit myself, but seriously this show has some creativity, and I knidof felt sorry for the male lead and the whole set-up of the story is much bigger than what you would usually suspect in a series like this. So please, GONZO: focus on the story. Just drop the comedy!
OP: Creative, but again the attempts to be funny failed horribly.
ED: Okay I have to admit the dancing security guards were pretty funny.
Potential: 70%

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet



Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet tells the storyline of a planet that is completely submerged, with only giant ships residing on the surface, while one of those ships gets visited by this guy and his AI-mecha from this very technologically advanced civilization. Yes, this show is about world building.

What this show managed to do really well is create a culture for the people who live on these ships, complete with customs, a new religion, a clothe style, a way of behavior. They use the technologically advanced culture well to explore this culture by clashing it, and show the differences. The show can keep this up, and it definitely has some interesting ideas to explore.

The shame is that this is a 13-episoded series that really just needed 26 episodes. It’s not rushed because of that, but it does have pacing issues, and glosses over a lot, and doesn’t really get to explore this setting to its fullest.Same goes for the characters: there are some good ones here: Ledo and his AI have this really good chemistry, and the acting in general is also quite good and down to earth… with some notable exceptions though. There are a number of annoying characters, and really weird character character-decisions that don’t make much sense. The storyline has nice ideas on one hand, but it does get a bit boring and redundant at others. Especially the beginning is good, and the conclusion also has its moments, but in the middle there are a few episodes that could have been better used; they waste too much time.

It’s a solidly produced series, and the creators managed to make this show stand out with tis visuals that manage to remain expressive. Gargantia is a show with issues, but I personally think that the pros weigh over the cons and it’s worth a watch. Just don’t go out of your way to watch it though, because there just are better series.
One-Sentence Review: Good world-building and characterization versus some big pacing issues causing this show to not get the full potential out of its ingredients, by far.
Suggestions:
– Blue Submarine No.06
– Heat Guy J
– Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Yahari Ore no Seishun no Love Come wa Machigatteiru Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


I like surprises, like when a series comes that just turns out to be good against my expectations. Yahari Blahblah from the outside had all the signs to turn into yet another one of those high school comedies: snarky male lead, pointlessly long title that fails at being witty, various other cliched side-characters. And they made something good out of it!

The credit here goes to the original light novels this was based on, because for once, this show aims to stray away from mindless fluff, even though it may not seem like that at first. The lead character at first seems like the umpth snarky male lead, but eventually he sets himself apart to be different by actually using the weaknesses in his own personality as a weapon. This gives him wit that leads to some very insightful character-development, and the great thing is that this series never claims that he is just right, but instead it provides multiple viewpoints at the same issue. The original source material was very well written, and thankfully the creators of the anime managed to carry that over in their adaptation.

The side characters also surprised me. They range from intelligent to… not so intelligent, but I was quite impressed with how so few actually try to play up their own stereotypes. For example, you have the typical blond girl who is the most popular girl in the school, and while she acts cocky, she actually has more to her character than that, and she never really just starts acing like a complete spoiled princess. The lead female at first seems like a Senjogahara-clone, but quickly develops her own traits that make her far less one-dimensional than what you’d expect.

There is a lot of standard high school fare, and this show does linger along at places, not to mention that I feel like its ending is quite rushed and inconclusive. The visuals also aren’t anything special: they are adequate, but the animation never stands out nor falters. Still, for a high school “romantic comedy”, this was pretty damn good.
One-Sentence Review: Takes the generic high-school love-comedy set-up, and makes it good with some deep characters.
Suggestions:
– Umi ga Kikoeru
– Hana-Saku Iroha
– His and Her Circumstances

Chihayafuru Second Season Review – 89/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Chihayafuru



Let’s put this into a bit of perspective: generally to warrant a second season a series needs to sell well in one way or the other. Chihayafuru’s DVD sales were abysmal: it sold like, 500 copies in its first week or so. Despite being a really excellent and well-made series, people just didn’t want to bite, and I had given up on any hope for a continuation. Imagine my surprise when the manga suddenly gets really popular and a second season has been highlighted!

And guess what? The production-values still are completely top-notch. There only are a few episodes with some bad and jerky animations. Otherwise: everything is perfectly crisp, the animation manages to make every single karuta match stand out and sparkle. There still is a ton of eye candy here. Any idea how hard it is to keep up this consistency for like fifty episodes?!

I mean, Chihayafuru’s sequel is just amazing. It continues the trend that the first season set, and just continues on with it, doing so many things right. Every single episode, it doesn’t just push one character forward; it tries to do this with as many characters as possible. No episode is wasted like this, and every episode brings something new to the table. It really is amazing how the creators continue to be able to do this. They introduce quite a few new characters that have a great impact on the storylines, and nearly all of them have some sort of gimmick, yet they feel real, and very relatable. The acting was fantastic in the first season, and that didn’t let up in the second, and the second now has so much build-up and development behind it!

It’s really clear that the creators here have a very good understanding of the game of Karuta: they really manage to flesh out the game even more in this season, and show many different sides of it. A downside is that if you just look at the matches objectively, then this series is a bit predictable in the big picture, but in the small picture, it’s everything but: the creators try their hardest to make the individual karuta-matches as exciting as possible.

This season does have a bit of a downside that it’s the middle arc, so there is no beginning, nor an ending, and because of that the juiciest developments are reserved for the other parts (if they’ll ever get there), and as a result this series does have less subject material, so it can move a bit slow at times. But still this show had some of the best characters of the year.
One-Sentence Review: If this series can’t get you fired up on Karuta, then nothing will; fantastic characterization.
Suggestions:
– Hikaru no Go
– Nodame Cantabile
– Shion no Ou

Valvrave The Liberator Review – 65/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Storytelling is hard. You can’t have a storyline that is about a bunch of characters watching paint dry: there needs to be some storyline, some sort of conflict to make things interesting. It’s an intricate balance that you need to find. Put way too much emphasis on the conflict, and you get Valvrave the Liberator.

Valvrave is a series that likes conflict. Every episode is geared to shock twists not really uncommon in a bad soap opera. Characters yell and screwm with drama, and things quickly devolve into this train-wreck of events that favors sensation over suspense of disbelief. The plot in this show tries to adhere Murphy’s law, and when it can’t it’ll just shove in some sort of plothole or -device. Because of all of the overacting the character-development also doesn’t really work because everyone just keeps acting outrageous rather than relatable.

For a while though, it was good. This show got so ridiculous that I just kept watching for my 20 minutes of brainless action per week. If there is anything that this show is good at, it’s eliciting emotions due to how over the top the plot went, and it didn’t seem to take itself seriously either. So of course near the end, it drops all that and starts to play its own story straight. The shocks are just there to shock, rather than to entertain as it tries to take itself so seriously. And that’s where it falls apart so horribly. The characters can’t hold the plot together without the comedy, and the twists… are totally inappropriate and devolve into pointless sensationalism.

Oh yes, they’ll get people talking about it, but not in a good way. There still is a second season due this Fall Season, and in all honesty, with the hints given it can return to its ironic self, but knowing the guy who wrote this it’s just going to devolve into an even bigger trainwreck. I really need to put more thought into what series I drop and keep watching, because this… wasn’t really worth the watch. It’s an easy page-turner, but totally not good storytelling!
One-Sentence Review: As long as it doesn’t take itself seriously, this is mindless bombast and entertainment; when it does, it falls apart completely in this sensationalist trainwreck.
Suggestions:
– Mai Hime
– Infinite Ryvius (an example of how to do such a storyline right)
– Macross Frontier

Hataraku Maou-Sama Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Hataraku Maou-Sama



Comedies in anime. Most of them are… juvenile, to say the least. Lots of show center around dumb fanservice humour, and the majority of the ones that are actually funny are so because of their characterization. Hataraku Maou-Sama set out to do something special: it tried to add a bit of intelligence to its jokes. It’s something that it couldn’t keep up for its entire run, but it’s a very interesting attempt nonetheless.

Let alone that for once we aren’t following a bunch of high schoolers, but people who are actually working. Here we have a series in which a demon lord suddenly has to adapt to the human world while being stranded there, and by far the best thing about this series is the way in which he does this. This series likes to build up its humour: with a lot of jokes, you’ll be “ah, so that’s why they did that”. The jokes in this series are really well written, and quite often they really are hilarious.

This series is a mixed bag in the character-department. It has some really fun characters on one hand (Maou and Ashiya make for a very fun and atypical comedy duo), while on the other hand other characters are bland and only annoying (Chiho), and others are sometimes great to watch, and sometimes the creators don’t really seem to know what to do with them. A lot of these problems stem from the fact that as well versed this show is on comedy, it doesn’t really know how to do proper character-development. Change in the characters is either completely predictable, or characters just make giant heel-turns as soon as they’re defeated, and a lot of characters here find it very hard to move away from their one-dimensional caricatures.

So yeah, this series’ biggest strength is its comedy. The problem is, that this isn’t really consistent. Personally, when I watch a comedy, I really want to laugh a lot. Hataraku Maou-Sama has strings of episodes that just aren’t funny enough; for me, at least. It also has one really dumb pool episode that kills a lot of fun as well. this series also may be focused on a demon king, but really: remove that and nothing much would really change in the overall storyline. This series never really uses its own symbolism well, making the overall storyline even flimsier.

As for the production-values: this show looks crisp. Very crisp, and there hardly ever is a badly drawn shot. You can really see that White fox was behind it, because their consistency is always top-notch. This show doesn’t excel in over the top eye-candy, but it still is very pretty to look at, and the soundtrack has one very good track to it that also is used at the moments that suit it best.

The question is: does the best stuff weight up to the boring parts? Well, I’d say that if you easily get annoyed by cliches, then it’s probably better to pass this one up. If you’re looking for very well done comedy, then by all means give this one a chance. Don’t expect much from the storyline, and you’ll be set.
One-Sentence Review: Clever comedy with good build-up, weighing against a bit of a dull storyline.
Suggestions:
– Ben-To
– Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
– Ooedo Rocket

Random Anime Recommendations

by psgels, posted in Random Anime Recommendations

Hey guys, I’m currently experimenting with a new format, inspired by the podcast I did together with Deadlights, Scammp and Juno. It inspired me to do a bit more with podcasts, but instead short ones. I’ve always had the idea of writing some kind of recommendation post: I mean I’ve written a lot of reviews at this point, but for most people looking for new stuff to watch it can be very intimidating to search through everything, so in these podcasts, instead of discussing the new shows I thought it’d be an interesting experiment to just recommend some older series that I’ve watched.

What I did, is that I’ve created some random generator of all the series that I’ve seen. After deleting some obvious sequels that list totals 964 series, movies and OVAs together. For each series I get, I’ll give reasons why it is recommended, or why it’s not to be recommended. I have no idea what series will come out of it, so it’s going to be completely improvised. Yes, I like to torture myself sometimes.

Also, I apologize for my accent. I’m Dutch, but even then I know it’s terrible. ^^;

These are the series that came out of the random generator this time, in order:

– Akira
– Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu
– Melody of Oblivion
– Love Hina
– Dororon Enma-kun Meerameera
– Kowarekake no Orgol
– She and her Cat

Also, apologies for ending so abruptly. I screwed around while cleaning up and accidentally removed the last few sentences. And feel free to discuss the series that I’ve mentioned. 🙂

May Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

Sorry for the lateness of this entry. You can thank animecon for that. Anyway, the current season. I’m having trouble keeping up with it, and because of that I am rather glad that it’s such a small season. Nevertheless, this just pales in comparison to what we’re used to from Spring Seasons.

#12 (13) – Saint Seiya Omega – (7.75/10) – Saint Seiya Omega is currently in its boring character-reintroduction phase. At least, that’s what I thought until the creators pulled that really random episode in which Ryuuho suddenly became a rock star in order to let out the conflicted feelings that loom inside of him. Saint Seiya, you are treading a very dangerous line between character development, and someone just completely changing character. And don’t get me wrong, I like the idea, the execution was just… weird.
#11 (8) – Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge – (7.9/10) – I watched up to episode 6, and I think I’m going to drop this in favor of other series. I like how it celebrates really weird fetishes and all, but it does so formulaic, and the different powers all feel rather shallow. With the length of this series I don’t really think that this show can really make something memorable.
#10 (12) – Valvrave The Liberator – (8/10) – Valvrave is completely stupid. It however realizes this, and just rolls with it. This also means that I will drop it as soon as it starts taking itself too seriously (there is no way you can get anything remotely serious out of this), but as long as it keeps bringing in the cheese I’m hooked.
#9 (9) – Majestic Prince – (8/10) – I’ve seen up to six episodes now I believe, and this was a big surprise. The creators took cardboard cut-outs and slowly gave them character. I still dislike how these guys are able to somehow do the impossible by winning battles against huge odds, but it uses this well at least.
#8 (10) – Yahari Blahblah – (8.25/10)

I have seen up to episode six here. Yahari Blahblah took a while to get going, and it had a few boring parts. However, episode five gave the characters depth that I was looking for. Here, some of the characters became more than just random tropes and I didn’t expect that.

#7 (4) – Hataraku Maou-Sama – (8.25/10)

Hataraku Maou-sama’s sense of humour rocks. It still makes me laugh in every episode, but the clever plotting… it just isn’t as clever as what it was In the first few episodes, and that made this series a bit of a disappointment to follow. But who knows. It has the potential to pick back up again.

#6 (6) – Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet – (8.25/10)

Gargantia could have balanced itself a bit out a bit better, resulting in two strange slice of life episodes after each other. It still had thought put into it and it showed new and different things about the setting, but the writing just was not as solid as what it could have been. Also culture or no culture, having a bunch of teenaged girls dance half-naked into a bunch of grown men… they could have put some more thought on that.

#5 (15) – Uchuu Kyoudai – (8.5/10)

My biggest problem with Uchuu Kyoudai isn’t the slow pacing. That is brilliant, and it really allows the characters to slowly build themselves. Instead, I get more and more annoyed with the recaps at the start of each episode. I know it’s small, but this series is so good. It’s not worth it to have it brought down by such a single stupid thing that makes it much longer than what it needs to be. Because the effort it put into its character development this month was brilliant.

#4 (5) – Hunter X Hunter – (8.5/10)

Thank god we’re finally at the new material when it takes off, and thank god it actually delivers! They took a bit of time to get used to, but the villains are getting better with every episode as this show continues to explore their personalities.

#3 (3) – Shingeki no Kyojin – (8.75/10)

This really turned into an awesome action series, in a different way from the manga. It really tries to put the characters into as much despair as possible, without making it one-sided. The giant designs really work well in animation and how some of them are coloured, and most imporantly: the characters are also getting very engaging to watch.

#2 (1) – Aku no Hana – (8.9/10)

I don’t care. Aku no Hana is amazing. Heck, the past month had a few scenes that would have been impossible to do right if it was in regular animation. And heck: if you ignore the low budget then the creators pretty much did a perfect adaptation for this series with how god damn expressive it is.

#1 (2) – Chihayafuru – (9/10)

That finale was awesome. It just boggles my mind how much build-up the creators have been putting up throughout the entire second season (and also first season) in order to reach that point. Heck, everything is just coming together in such a ridiculously solid way. It’s amazing!